Second reef in inner harbour

On Friday October 16th a second small reef was set at the southern end of the inner harbour, a further development of ECF’s Port River Shellfish Restoration Project

The reef was created from 35 coir bags of clean recycled oyster shell and topped with 44 native oysters that Rae Nunan, an ECF volunteer, has looked after at North Haven since they were spat in May 2018.

The reef site previously hosted native oysters in baskets and is now the site of an AusOcean rig that was built and deployed by Portside Christian College students. The rig has sensors for monitoring and an underwater camera, with wifi connection to the College.

The reef build was undertaken with the support of 8 different organisations, including Estuary Care Foundation. Key contributions included:

• AML NRM (now Greeen Adelaide) provided funds for the coir bags purchased from Ocean Watch
• Mike Burrell, Malacological Society collected the shell (recycled from SA oyster growers) from Yorke Peninsula and delivered it to Portside Christian College
• Students at Portside Christian College filled the bags and assisted with their transfer to the site, supervised by Cavan Newble
• Travis Howson, OzFish provided his punt that enabled the bags to be deployed
• Volunteers from ECF, Marine Life Society and Conservation Volunteers Australia brought the bags to the punt and deployed them under the AusOcean rig
• Catherine Larkin and Saxon Nelson-Milton, AusOcean deployed our oysters on the bags and will support the College in the ongoing monitoring of the reef
• Adelaide University student, Andreas Reuter did a sound recording at the site, prior to the bags deployment, and a recording at our first inner harbour reef